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Prescience

Opening scene from Brazil, 1985

The populace of Oceania, belonging to three classes - Inner Party members, Outer Party members and members of a lower-class proletariat ("the Proles") - is subordinate to ruthless government control. This is accomplished and regulated by a "Ministry of Truth" in which the protagonist, Winston Smith, works as an Outer Party member. Smith spends his days constantly rewriting and altering history to satisfy the government (which includes destroying all evidence of history not conducive to the government's agenda) - amending newspaper articles of the past so as to remove all reference to predictions that did not come true, and individuals whom the state has identified as "unpersons" (people who the state declares as having never existed). Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Written in 1948 and published in 1949, 59 years ago, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a great example of prescience. Orwell really hit the nail on the head, he just was a little off on the date. How did he know?

And what about Terry Gilliam, the mind behind the brilliant 1985 film Brazil, whose original working title was "1984 1/2" ... just a keen observer with a great sense of humor, or another example of prescience? He loosely based his film on Orwell's opus, but drew heavily from his own experience with mind-numbing bureaucracy. The pursuit of terrorists by the Information Retrieval Department in the film make this film very relevant for what we see in today's fear-oriented American society, I'm afraid to say (pun intended). I rented the DVD and watched it again last weekend...didn't realize we'd be looking at a dystopia like Gilliam envisioned, here today in 2008, 23 years later, yet here we are, looking today at a Senate that has dropped the ball when it comes to lawmaking and lawbreaking, privacy, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, etc.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, aka Our Right to Privacy

Retroactive Immunity got a boost today as a new form of lawmaking, where lawmakers don't legislate with the future in mind (that's so Yesterday), but rather they go back to change laws that have already been broken, in order to protect the law-breakers, under the guise of keeping us all safe from terrorists - that's the new way of breaking making laws.

Presto, our government and those who cooperated with it may have broken the law, see, but that's only if you think of the law in old-fashioned terms, as in rules written by our legislature, passed and signed by presidents, conforming to and upholding the U.S. Constitution, and which apply to all citizens of the United States, regardless of rank or privilege.

No, with the new way of thinking, it's all better. In this case, they only had to do a little clean up work in order to get the law to conform with their actions, see, because they needed to do what needed to be done to keep the people safe, see, whether or not it was against the law, and besides they never would be at this point discussing retroactive immunity if it hadn't been for that pesky New York Times which dragged this issue out into the public eye (see Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts)..don't you know, they were doing just fine operating in secret, keeping us all safe...the Constitution? That's no longer relevant, because we're at war.......what's important is that we be forever vigilant against threats to our society and way of life. Out the window go those old concepts of truth, justice, laws, due process, etc. So 20th Century, dude. Much cleaner to let the President and his guys keep us safe.

I believe that spying on Americans without a warrant as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is illegal, whether you call it "operating outside the law" or "breaking the law." When I break a law, it's certainly called "breaking the law," and I face serious consequences, like getting arrested and being thrown in jail..But now it seems we have a society divided into two parts...those, like you and me, who must follow the law or face serious consequences, and those like AT&T, Verizon, and Pres. Bush, and VP Cheney, the CIA, the Department of Justice (don't forget Scooter LIbbey either!), etc. who are free to operate outside the law, for whom the laws will be changed if needed, ex post facto, by a compliant law-making body, aka the Senate.

The ministries' names are an example of doublethink - "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation." (Part II, Chapter IX - Chapter I of Goldstein's book)Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Thankfully though, as bleak as it seems this afternoon, the jury, so to speak, is still out on this dark chapter in our history....please check out this website, read about today's FISA votes in the Senate, and encourage the members of the House of Representatives - who represent you and me in this democratic republic - to draw a line in the sand and stop this extra-Constitutional behavior in its tracks.

We can look forward to this ...

or, we can choose to be safe and still enjoy the civil liberties bequeathed to us by our forefathers. We don't have to trade one for the other. It's a false choice. We can have both safety AND liberty. Dare I say it, "Yes, We Can."

Posted on February 12, 2008 at 12:55 PM

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